1080p 120fps video editing

Hi! I've bought GoPro Hero 6 recently and fairly familiar with video editing. When I take 1080p 120fps video and I'm slowing it down in video player like QuickTime or VLC or in video editer like Adobe Premiere I'm expecting to see a smooth slowmo, however the slow play back is choppy. My mac has 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Intel Iris 1536 MB. SD card I'm using for GoPro is 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Plus. Just in case this is an example of the video how I see it in QuickTime in slomo mode - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_ScRIl1Gvir6gkTkf-Il-G8s34AOhje3/view. I tried to play it in QuickTime and slow down in Premiere on more powerful computers, but the result is the same. Also, i tried 2 different cameras. So the question is: is there an issue at all or this is the behaviour that is expected and I'm just being dumb and should learn more about 120fps video editing?

Re: 1080p 120fps video editing

What type of storage are you using? If I'm using video stored on my SSD, it plays much more smoothly than if it's on the 1TB Hard drive. Also, what playback resolution are you using? Decrease the playback resolution and it should improve. If not, try using Proxies.

When you export, what does the video look like? Have you uploaded to Vimeo or Youtube? If so please post an example here.

When applying slow motion in Adobe Premiere, what method are you using? Are you rendering the selection after applying the Slow motion effect? What are your sequence settings? In general, you wont see super fluid playback in the editor, especially with a low end computer.

Unfortunately, while you have a decent computer for everyday use, it's not very powerful for video editing. For example, I have a Quad Core i7, 32GB DDR3, 128GB SSD with NVIDIA GTX 1050 ti and I need to use 1/4 and 1/8 playback resolution and even then, it can get choppy at higher resolutions/frame rates.

A decent, but still nowhere near professional rig would be something like, Octa Core i7, 64GB DDR3, Samsung 970 Pro 1TB SSD with a NVIDIA GTX 1080.

For me it's just suprisingly frustrating if that would be just a computer power issue. I can see how the Premiere preview is not smooth, but I feel like QuickTime slow playback should be fine... Do you know any places where I can download some kind of sample 120fps video to test Premiere and QuickTime?

Re: 1080p 120fps video editing

It is on by default, so you will want to turn it off. With Auto Low Light turned on, the camera lowers the frame rate in low light (like in your video). So, while you might think that you are filming in 120fps, the camera might automatically drop it down to 60 or 30 fps (I think it always goes to 30fps, but I never use it, so I'm not sure).

Re: 1080p 120fps video editing

You can probably take a test video right now (with Auto Low Light Turn OFF) and see if it changes your results. The video will probably be pretty dark, so try to go into a room (bathrooms usually work) with plenty of light.